For, ere the last note of the cheer had ceased ringing out from their lusty throats, Captain Gillespie’s long nose came round the corner of the cook’s caboose, followed shortly afterwards by the owner of the article—causing Ching Wang, who had been surveying the progress of the fight with much enjoyment, to retreat instantly within his galley, the smile of satisfaction on his yellow oval face and twinkle of his little pig-like eyes being replaced by that innocent look of one conscious of rectitude and in whom there is no guile, affected by most of his celestial countrymen.
“Hullo, bosun!” cried the captain, addressing Tim Rooney, who was helping me to put on my jacket again, and endeavouring, rather unsuccessfully, to conceal all traces of the fray on my person. “What the dickens does all this mean?”
“Sorry o’ me knows, sorr, why them omahdawns is makin’ all av that row a-hollerin’,” said Tim, scratching his head as he always did when puzzled for the moment for an answer. “It’s ownly Misther Gray-ham, sorr, an’ Misther Wakes havin’ a little bit of foon togither, an’ settlin’ their differses in a frindly way, loike, sorr.”
“Fighting, I suppose,—eh?”
An ominous stillness succeeded this question, the men around following Ching Whang’s example and sneaking inside the forecastle and otherwise slily disappearing from view. Presently, only Tim Rooney and Matthews remained before the captain besides us two, the principals of the fight, and Tom Jerrold, who, blocked between Captain Gillespie and the caboose, could not possibly manage to get away unperceived.
“Yes, there’s no doubt you’ve been fighting,” continued the captain, looking from Weeks to me and from me to Weeks, and seeming to take considerably more interest than either of us cared for in our bruised knuckles and battered faces and generally dilapidated appearance; for his long nose turned up scornfully as he sniffed and expanded his nostrils, compressing his thin lips at the end of his inspection with an air of decision. “Well, youngsters, I’d have you to know that I don’t allow fighting aboard my ship, and when I say a thing I mean a thing. There!”
“But, sir,” snivelled Weeks, beginning some explanation, intended no doubt to throw all the blame on me. “Graham—”
Captain Gillespie, however, interrupted him before he could proceed any further.
“You’d better not say anything, Weeks,” said the captain. “Graham’s a new hand and you’re an old one; at least, you’ve already been one voyage, whilst this is his first. I see you’ve had a lickin’ and I’m glad of it, as I daresay it’s been brought about by your own bullying; for I know you, Master Samuel Weeks, by this time, and you can’t take me in as you used to do with your whining ways! If I didn’t believe you were pretty well starched already, I’d give you another hiding now, my lad. Please, my good young gentleman, just to oblige me, go up in the mizzen-top so that I can see you’re there, and stop till I call you down! As for you, Matthews, whom I have just promoted I’m surprised at your forgetting yourself as an officer, and coming here forrud, to take part with the crew in a disgraceful exhibition like this. I—”
“Please, sir—” expostulated the culprit. But the captain was firm on the matter of discipline, as I came to know in time.